Saturday, July 23, 2016

BALTIMORE HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS/The Big Boom: Nukes and NATO - We May Be at a Greater Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe Than During the Cold War

BALTIMORE
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS

For the 32nd year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember
the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than
200,000 people. It has been 71 years since these awful events occurred.
Other organizations involved in the commemorations are the Baltimore Quaker
Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians
for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and Pledge of
Resistance-Baltimore.

6:30 PM March to the
Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles Street. Joseph Byrne, from
Baltimore’s Jonah House, will perform some dulcimer music, and David Eberhardt,
a member of the Baltimore Four, will do some poetry. Mr. Toshiyuki
Mimaki, a Hiroshima Hibakusha (Atomic Bomb Survivor), will join us, and he will
call on the nations of the world to abolish nuclear
weapons so that the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is never repeated. The
Hibakusha’s greatest fear is that when they are gone, the memory of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki will disappear and nuclear weapons will be used again, this time
threatening life itself.

5:30
PM Savor a potluck dinner with members of the peace and justice community.
David Eberhardt will again share some poetry, and there may be some music in
the room.

7
PM Gun
violence in the USA is unrelenting. Firmin
DeBrabander, a professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, is
the author of "Do Guns Make us Free?" He will offer some possible
solutions to the gun violence epidemic.

“Today, the
danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the
Cold War,” warns William Perry, “and most people are blissfully unaware of this
danger.”

A former
U.S. defense secretary from 1994 to 1997, Perry has been an inside player in
the business of nuclear weapons for over 60 years. And his book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink[1], is a
sober read. It’s also a powerful counterpoint to NATO’s current European
strategy, which envisions nuclear weapons as a deterrent to war: The purpose of
nukes “is to prevent major war, not to wage wars,” argues the Alliance’s
magazine, NATO Review[2].

But as
Perry points out, it’s only by chance that the world has avoided a nuclear war
— sometimes by nothing more than dumb luck — and, rather than enhancing our
security, nukes “now endanger it.”

The 1962
Cuban missile crisis is generally represented as a dangerous standoff resolved
by sober diplomacy. In fact, it was a single man — Russian submarine commander
Vasili Arkhipov — who countermanded orders to launch a nuclear torpedo at an
American destroyer that could have set off a full-scale nuclear exchange
between the Soviet Union and the United States.

There were
numerous other incidents that brought the world to the brink. On a quiet
morning in November 1979, a NORAD computer reported a full-scale Russian sneak
attack with land and sea-based missiles, which led to scrambling U.S. bombers
and alerting U.S. missile silos to prepare to launch. But it turned out there
was no Soviet attack — just an errant test tape.

Lest anyone
think the incident was an anomaly, a little more than six months later NORAD
computers erroneously announced that Soviet submarines had launched 220
missiles at the United States. This time the cause was a defective chip that
cost 49 cents — again resulting in scrambling interceptors and putting the silos
on alert.

But don’t
these examples prove that accidental nuclear war is unlikely? That conclusion
is a dangerous illusion, argues Perry, because the price of being mistaken is
so high — and because the world is a more dangerous place than it was in 1980.

A Worsening
Climate

It’s been
71 years since atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and humanity’s
memory of those events has dimmed. But even were the entire world to read John
Hersey’sHiroshima, it would have little idea of what we face today.

The bombs
that obliterated those cities were tiny by today’s standards, and comparing
“Fat Man” and “Little Boy” — the incongruous names of the weapons that leveled
both cities — to modern weapons stretches any analogy beyond the breaking
point. If the Hiroshima bomb represented approximately 27 freight cars filled
with TNT, a one-megaton warhead would require a train[3] 300
miles long.

What’s made
today’s world more dangerous, however, aren’t just advances in the destructive
power of nuclear weapons, but a series of actions by the last three U.S.
administrations.

First was
the decision by President Bill Clinton to abrogate a 1990 agreement with the
Soviet Union not to push NATO further east after the reunification of Germany
or to recruit former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact.

NATO has
also reneged on a 1997 pledge not to install “permanent” and “significant”
military forces in former Warsaw Pact countries. This month NATO decided to
deploy four battalions on or near the Russian border, arguing that since the
units will be rotated, they’re not “permanent” or large enough to be
“significant.” It’s a linguistic slight of hand that doesn’t amuse Moscow.

Second was
the 1999 U.S.-NATO intervention in the Yugoslav civil war and the forcible
dismemberment of Serbia. It’s somewhat ironic that Russia has been accused of using
force to “redraw borders in Europe” by annexing Crimea, which is exactly what
NATO did to create Kosovo. The U.S. subsequently built Camp Bond Steel,
Washington’s largest base in the Balkans.

Third was
President George W. Bush’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty and the decision by the Obama administration to deploy
anti-missile systems in Romania and Poland, as well as Japan and South Korea.

Last is the
decision by the current White House to spend upwards of $1 trillion upgrading
its nuclear weapons arsenal, which includes building bombs with smaller yields[4], a move
that many critics argue blurs the line between conventional and nuclear
weapons.

Strategic
Uncertainty

The
Yugoslav War and NATO’s move east convinced Moscow that the U.S.-led alliance
was surrounding Russia with potential adversaries, and the deployment of
anti-missile systems, or ABMs — supposedly aimed at Iran’s non-existent nuclear
weapons — was seen as a threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

One
immediate effect of ABMs was to chill the possibility of further cuts in the
number of nuclear weapons. When Obama proposed another round of warhead
reductions, the Russians turned it down cold, citing the anti-missile systems
as the reason. “How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic
nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to
intercept Russian missiles?” asked Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin[5].

When the
U.S. endorsed the 2014 coup against the pro-Russian government in Ukraine, it
ignited the current crisis that has led to several dangerous incidents between
Russian and NATO forces — at last count, according to the European
Leadership Network,[6] more than 60. Several large
war games were also held on Moscow’s borders. Former Soviet president Mikhail
Gorbachev[7] went so far as to accuse NATO of making “preparations for
switching from a cold war to a hot war.”

In
response, the Russians have also held war games involving up to 80,000 troops.

It is
unlikely that NATO intends to attack Russia, but the power differential between
the U.S. and Russia is so great — a “colossal asymmetry,” Dmitri Trenin, head
of the Carnegie Moscow Center, told the Financial Times — that
the Russians have abandoned their “no first use” of nuclear weapons pledge.

It’s the
lack of clear lines that makes the current situation so fraught with danger.
While the Russians have said they would consider using small tactical nukes[8] if
“the very existence of the state” was threatened by an attack, NATO is being
deliberately opaque about its possible tripwires. According
to NATO Review[2], nuclear “exercises should
involve not only nuclear weapons states… but other non-nuclear allies,” and “to
put the burden of the doubt on potential adversaries, exercises should not
point at any specific nuclear thresholds.”

In short,
keep the Russians guessing. The immediate problem with such a strategy is: What
if Moscow guesses wrong?

That won’t
be hard to do. The U.S. is developing a long-range cruise missile — as are the
Russians — that can be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads. But how
will an adversary know which is which? And given the old rule in nuclear
warfare — use ‘em or lose ‘em — uncertainty is the last thing one wants to
engender in a nuclear-armed foe.

Indeed, the
idea of no “specific nuclear thresholds” is one of the most extraordinarily
dangerous and destabilizing concepts to come along since the invention of
nuclear weapons.

Cold Wars
of Choice

There is
currently no evidence that Russia contemplates an attack on the Baltic states
or countries like Poland. Given the enormous power of the United States, which
offers a security guarantee to NATO members, such an undertaking would court
national suicide.

Nor do
Russia’s recent border conflicts suggest otherwise. Moscow’s “aggression”
against Georgia and Ukraine was provoked. Georgia attacked Russia, not vice
versa, and the Ukraine coup torpedoed a peace deal negotiated by the European
Union, the United States, and Russia. Imagine Washington’s view of a
Moscow-supported coup in Mexico, followed by an influx of Russian weapons and
trainers.

In a
memorandum to the recent NATO meetings in Warsaw, the group Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity argued[9] as
much. “There is not one scintilla of evidence of any Russian plan to annex
Crimea before the coup in Kiev and coup leaders began talking about joining
NATO,” the members insisted. “If senior NATO leaders continue to be unable or
unwilling to distinguish between cause and effect, increasing tension is
inevitable with potentially disastrous results.”

The
organization of former intelligence analysts also sharply condemned the NATO war games[10]that
followed. “We shake our heads in disbelief when we see Western leaders
seemingly oblivious to what it means to the Russians to witness exercises on a
scale not seen since Hitler’s army launched ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’ 75 years
ago, leaving 25 million Soviet citizens dead.”

While the
NATO meetings in Warsaw agreed to continue economic sanctions aimed at Russia
for another six months and to station four battalions of troops in Poland and
the Baltic states — along with separate U.S. forces[11] in
Bulgaria and Poland — there was an undercurrent of dissent[12]. Greek
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for deescalating the tensions with Russia
and for considering Russian President Vladimir Putin a partner rather than an
enemy.

Greece was
not alone. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called NATO
maneuvers on the Russian border “warmongering” and “saber rattling.” French
President Francois Hollande said Putin should be considered a “partner,” not a
“threat,” and France tried to reduce the number of troops being deployed in the
Baltic and Poland. Italy has been increasingly critical of the sanctions as
well.

Rather than
recognizing the growing discomfort of a number of NATO allies and that beefing
up forces on Russia’s borders might be destabilizing, U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry recently inked[13] defense
agreements with Georgia and Ukraine.

After
disappearing from the radar for several decades, nukes are back, and the
decision to modernize the U.S. arsenal will almost certainly kick off a nuclear
arms race with Russia and China. Russia is already replacing its current ICBM
force with the more powerful and long range “Sarmat” ICBM[14], and China
is loading its own missiles with multiple warheads.

Add to this
volatile mixture military maneuvers and a deliberately opaque policy in regards
to the use of nuclear weapons, and it’s no wonder that Perry thinks that the
chances of some catastrophe is a growing possibility.

"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs